


certain dark things

by jehans



Series: it's for you [6]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 11:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehans/pseuds/jehans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jehan contemplates as Courfeyrac sleeps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	certain dark things

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place just a few hours after "grand fucking gestures".
> 
> Poems referenced (and all-out recited) are “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in” by e.e. cummings and “Love Sonnet XVII” by Pablo Neruda.

You wake up in the middle of the night because you love him so much. Nothing like that has ever happened to you before, but the swell of love that rises in you as you sleep next to him is so strong, you wake up.

He’s lying his side, turned to you, dead asleep. He’s so ridiculously lovely, you find yourself wondering if you haven’t imagined him up and into your bed.

Well,  _his_  bed, actually. You came back to his.

After you told him you loved him and he took you in a manly fashion on the table (you smile and flush at the memory) and you kissed each other’s bodies as you helped each other dress again, he took your hand and led you back to his apartment, giggling as he pulled you into his room and tenderly peeled your clothes off again.

Now you’re tangled together in his bed, skin against skin, and he’s breathing deeply in sleep and he’s so achingly beautiful, you just want to touch him to be sure he’s really there.

You lift your head and lean in the few inches to kiss his beautiful face. It feels warm and real against your lips, but the touch just makes you hunger for more of him. So you move across his face, along his neck, to his collarbone, leaving kisses in your wake because  _you can_. Because you’re allowed to, now. Because you’ve spent too much time longing for him and now he’s yours.

His eyes flutter open as he wakes up (and of course he does, you’re practically sucking on his shoulder now). When his half-closed eyes focus on you, he smiles. There’s such love and gentleness in his smile that you feel like you’re swooning. Then his eyes cast around the room and his brows knit together in confusion.

“It’s still dark,” he observes, his voice low with grogginess.

“Are you real?” you whisper to him instead of continuing on with that line of conversation.

Courfeyrac gazes up at you again. “What?” he asks softly.

You brush his face with your fingers, trailing them down to his chest, as you continue. “You can’t be, though. You’re too good —” here, you place another little kiss on his forehead, making him sigh happily, “— too wonderful —” on his nose, “— too lovely —” his lips, where he catches you and holds you for longer than you expected so you’re a bit breathless when you finish, “— to really be mine.”

He lets out a gust of air as he looks up at you, a kind of wonder lighting his eyes. Then he smiles. You feel that thrill in your gut again. “I am yours,” he breathes and you feel goosebumps rise all over you. “I’m all yours, for as long as you want me.”

He reaches out and finds your hand, brushing his fingers over your fingers and raising more goosebumps over your arms and neck. Boldly, you whisper, “What if I want you forever?”

It’s not something you’re supposed to ask on a first date — not that this has even been a proper date. But he told you he loved you before he’d ever kissed you, and you’re sleeping in his bed having officially been with him only a few hours, and you’ve known him for years and loved him as long, and you want to know.

His fingers still on yours as he props himself up on his elbow to press his forehead against yours. “Then you will have me forever,” he breathes his promise, and brushes your nose with his.

Your eyes close and you breathe him. You’re overwhelmed by him, by his life and his spirit and his love. Words spill out of you before you can stop their whispered escape:

_here is the deepest secret nobody knows_   
_(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud_   
_and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows_   
_higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
_ _and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart_

_i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)_

When you look again, the stars are locked in his eyes, the sun in his smile. He kisses you and pulls you in, shifting you both effortlessly until he’s lying on top of you, his arms on either side of you, holding him up as he ducks his head to press moonlit kisses into your chest and collarbone and neck, and between kisses, he murmurs:

_I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz_   
_or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:_   
_I love you as certain dark things are loved,_   
_secretly, between the shadow and the soul._   
_I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries_   
_hidden within itself the light of those flowers,_   
_and thanks to your love, darkly in my body  
_ _lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth._

_I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,_   
_I love you simply, without problems or pride:  
_ _I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving_

_but this, in which there is no I or you,_   
_so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,  
_ _so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close._

You feel like you can’t breathe when he’s finished. You’ve been kissed all over and touched and loved with poetry breathed into your skin and maybe you don’t need air, maybe you just need this. Maybe you just need him.

“I didn’t know you knew Neruda,” you hear yourself gasp and his sunshine smile flashes toward you again.

“I’ve read that one a lot lately,” he says, pulling himself up toward your face again. “As I’ve longed for you and loved you, ‘ _as certain dark things are loved._ ’”

And then he kisses you, slowly and deeply.

And you love him (which you would tell him if your mouth could do anything but kiss him kiss him), and he’s yours. And you’re his, and he loves you.

And it’s real.


End file.
